Onslaught (Rise of the Empire Book 6) (13 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Anessa and Garaam sat in the shuttle, an armored variant designed for troop transport, and waited as the shuttle dropped down to Adrian’s base. She knew that the armor of the shuttle would do little to prevent them from being destroyed should Adrian wish it; the base’s defenses were still active and tracking as the shuttle slowly lowered itself through the thin atmosphere of the planet. Anessa and Garaam had reached the planet on their super battleships, which had their shields lowered and weapons powered down, escorted by ten Empire ships.

Her Do Sun, Arisak, had tried to convince her that they should fight, that her going to the planet was a trick of their enemy to get her back as a prisoner. But Arisak didn’t know Adrian. If he had wanted to destroy the remainder of the Legions, he would’ve done it by now. And he didn’t need her as a prisoner. Anessa knew that there was only one thing that Adrian was interested in, and that was peace between the Shara Daim and his Empire.

The shuttle reached the surface and they followed the instructions, entering a large hangar that had opened in the side of the mountain.

“Remember what I told you,” Anessa said to Garaam. “Don’t use the Sha on them at all, and don’t threaten them. We are only here to talk.”

“And if they threaten us?” Garaam asked.

“They won’t, but if something like that happens, let me handle it.”

The shuttle landed, and they stood and walked to the ramp that was already lowering, Anessa taking the lead. The hangar was almost empty; there was no activity anywhere around them. In front of her shuttle stood twelve people in battle armor with their weapons held in their hands and pointed at the floor. A few of them were Nel and others Human, at least based on their shape. On both sides of them stood another twelve aliens that she had never seen, standing taller, with three limbs on their upper body and three strange ‘leg-like’ limbs on which they stood. Anessa’s eyes widened when she felt their minds and realized that they had the Sha.

In front of the soldiers stood three figures. One was a Nel dressed in a normal Empire skin-suit with an over-garment that had a symbol on it; she recognized him both from her captivity and the communication with Adrian from her ship. She had heard him called Gotu; whether that was a title or a name, she didn’t know, but she was sure that he served as something similar to her Do Sun.

The other person wore a set of armor that the Dai Sha had only seen once before, on the day that she had tried to capture Adrian. She couldn’t see the face, but she could tell that it was a female. Whether it was the same one that she fought on that day, she didn’t know, but she stood a step behind on Adrian’s right. Adrian wore the same armor as the person behind him, only his wasn’t deployed.

“Anessa, I’m glad that you accepted my offer,” Adrian said once she was close enough, his eyes somehow soft at seeing her. “And I see you brought a friend.” He quirked his eyebrow in a way she had seen him do a thousand times, but now for some reason it made her smile slightly.

“Yes, this is Dai Sha Garaam of the Fourteenth Legion,” Anessa introduced her friend, and watched Adrian for a reaction.

Adrian bowed his head slightly. “I am Lord Sentinel Adrian Farkas of the Empire.”

He didn’t seem at all concerned that Anessa had brought Garaam with her, even though he must have realized how potentially dangerous the two of them were. Together and fighting without restraint, they could do a lot of damage. But Adrian simply gestured for the two of them to follow him. The rest of his people took positions behind them and they walked through the base in silence.

They walked through a part of the base that she wasn’t familiar with, and after a while finally reached their destination. The soldiers, aliens, Gotu, and the female in the armor took positions around the door while Adrian led Anessa and Garaam inside.

Anessa was surprised to see that he had led them into what could only be living quarters. He gestured at the seating furniture in the middle of the room and took a seat across from the two of them. He didn’t speak, he only studied her, casting a glance or two in Garaam’s direction from time to time.

“Why are we here, Adrian?” Anessa asked finally.

Again, Adrian’s eyebrow rose. “I am here because this is my home. I hope that you know why you are here, or do you wander into other people’s systems attacking them at random?”

Garaam frowned, and Anessa sighed. “Don’t play your games now, Adrian, I am not in the mood. We have just lost a lot of our people and are now sitting across from the one responsible.”

Adrian’s expression cleared and settled into his expressionless mask. “Yes, you have lost a lot of people. But I warned you, Anessa, I begged you to go to your Elders and find a way for there to be peace between us. We have never done anything to your people, and yet you decided that we are weak and that you somehow have a right to what is ours. You and your Elders are the only ones that are responsible for the deaths of your people.”

Garaam started to move. Anessa felt her reach for the Sha and quickly put her own hand on hers to stop her.
“Don’t,”
Anessa sent, and for a moment she thought that Garaam wasn’t going to listen to her, but she pulled back.

“What do you want, Adrian? I told you once that Shara Daim are loyal to our Elders; we won’t change our minds just because you say so, or because we lost people,” Anessa said.

“You told me also that the Empire is weak. Do you think that that is still true?” He asked.

Anessa wanted to say yes, but she knew that she would be lying. “No,” she said. It didn’t mean that she no longer believed in everything she had been taught, though; it only meant that she acknowledged him as a worthy opponent, nothing more.

Adrian nodded and reached with his hand into his over-garment. Anessa felt Garaam stiffen when he pulled his hand back and showed them a spherical object.

“Do you know what this is?” Adrian asked.

Anessa looked at the unimpressive globe; it was silver in color with no markings whatsoever. “No, should I?” Anessa asked.

“Of course you should, this is what you came for. The reason why your Elders sent you against my people,” he said nonchalantly.

Anessa’s eyes widened as he levitated the sphere above his palm. A telepathic pulse came from the sphere, and Anessa knew that he was telling the truth. The Elders had told her that the beacon was unmistakable, and it was.

“This is the device your Elders want. Do you know what it is?” he asked Garaam.

“It is the device left by our ancestors, holding all of their knowledge,” Garaam said, sliding closer to the edge and leaning forward.

“It does contain all of their knowledge, yes. But it also contains the consciousness of Axull Darr, or rather a copy of his consciousness,” Adrian said.

Garaam frowned. “Axull Darr?”

Adrian looked at her strangely. “Axull Darr, one of the People, the one who created our three races,” he explained, and then turned to look back at Anessa with a question in his eyes.

Anessa grimaced. She knew about Axull Darr because she had pressured the Elders into telling her, but everyone else still believed that Shara Daim were direct descendants of the People.

“We are descendants of the People, we weren’t created,” Garaam said with a hint of anger, turning to look at Anessa, but the look on her face must’ve told her the truth. “Anessa?”

“The Elders kept some things from the rest of us. We are not direct descendants of a colony left behind. We were created by Axull Darr from his own DNA, infused into a lifeform on our homeworld.”

Garaam looked shocked, but before she had a chance to say anything, Adrian interrupted.

“I brought you here so that you may learn the truth right from its source.” He placed the sphere on the table. “Axull Darr,” he called, and lines started appearing in the sphere. Anessa felt a telepathic vibration in the Sha, and then moment later, a being was floating above them. It looked vaguely like a Nel, or a Human, or a Shara Daim, but it was different.

“I am Axull Darr,” the hologram spoke.

Adrian stood and moved towards the doors. “You will not have this device. Try to fight your way out and both you and your people in my system will die,” he said, allowing a bit of his certainty to leak through his mind. “Talk with him, ask about anything that you want to know. I will wait outside.”

As soon as Adrian left, Garaam stood and grabbed the sphere; Axull Darr didn’t react.

“So they lied about more things than we thought,” Garaam said under her breath.

Anessa frowned at her. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Garaam turned to look at her, an embarrassed look on her face. She remained silent for a moment, enough to look at the sphere in her hand and then back at Anessa. “There are things that you don’t know. There are some of us who have been having…let’s say suspicions about the Elders.”

“Suspicions,” Anessa said, shocked.

“We should speak of it later, away from enemies.” Garaam turned to look at Axull Darr but kept speaking to Anessa. “Are we sure that this isn’t some kind of a trick?”

“You felt its beacon,” Anessa said, giving in to Garaam’s change of topic, with every intention of speaking about her suspicions later.

“I did,” Garaam said. “He said that you are a copy of our ancestor’s consciousness,” Garaam said to Axull Darr.

“That is correct, I have all his memories and knowledge. I am him, in a way, a digital version of his mind,” Axull Darr responded.

“So if we are not descendent from a colony, why did you create us?” Garaam asked. And Anessa turned her complete attention on him, interested; the Elders had given her only snippets that she wasn’t even sure were true.

“We, the People, were the first intelligent race in the galaxy. We lived for a long time, but eventually we started dying off, until finally there was only a handful of us left. We tried to find a way to save ourselves, and inadvertently we created something that shouldn’t exist, a horror that we were too weak to stop. Some of us fashioned a plan to contain it, but I disagreed with their methods. I split off from them and came to this area of space; I found three different worlds and merged my DNA with the emerging lifeforms of those planets: Nel, Human, and yours—Shara Daim. This was in the hope that someday you would grow powerful enough to stop what we created,” Axull Darr said.

“Our history, our beliefs, are that we are destined to rule this galaxy through strength and power, just like our ancestors did before us,” Garaam said unsurely. It must’ve been a shock for her to learn that the Shara Daim had been created.

“My people never ruled the galaxy through strength. We were the first intelligent race in the galaxy; there was no one to oppose us. Over time, we spread across the stars, and then grew lonely, so we encouraged other life, uplifting them and guiding them to join us to the stars. We never had wars, never conquered anyone; we were simply too far ahead of anyone for them to be a threat to us. We helped younger races through turmoil, mediated between them, showed them how to master technology. But we never thought ourselves better than them; we were older, wiser, not superior.”

Garaam was looking at him, her feelings reflected on her face, and Anessa could see that her friend felt the same way that she did. His words went against everything that she knew to be true and that she had been taught. It was hard, so hard of Anessa to accept that as truth. She had been fighting doubt since that moment when the Elders had told her a part of the truth, and then even more as Adrian had tried to convince her. And now she could feel her belief disappearing; the core of who she’d thought herself to be was tumbling down.

“May I ask you a question?” Axull Darr said, jolting both Anessa and Garaam from their thoughts.

“Yes,” Anessa answered quickly.

“Why are you aging?” Axull Darr asked.

Anessa and Garaam looked at each other in confusion.

“What do you mean?” Anessa said.

“The sphere’s sensors have just finished their analysis of your code. The genetic markers required for preventing the aging process have been disabled. I was wondering if you know why your people decided to do that,” Axull Darr said.

“You are saying that we shouldn’t age?” Garaam asked, a hint of anger entering her voice.

“Once you gained the Sha, your race would stop aging; the two evolutions are tied together. Unless you did something like what the humans did. They stopped their own aging long before they gained the Sha; in a way, they stopped themselves from gaining it in the manner that I intended. But there are no signs that something like that has happened to you. Your DNA followed the path laid down by me exactly; the genes were disabled after they were active, and that could’ve only happened on purpose.”

“They must’ve done that, too,” Garaam said, agitated.

“Garaam?” Anessa said.

“We need to go, Anessa. If this Human will let us leave, we must go now. We knew that they had been doing things to keep their power, but now it makes sense,” Garaam said.

“The Elders?”

“Yes. We must talk, on one of our ships,” Garaam said, now impatient.

“May we leave now?” Anessa asked.

“Of course, I’ll let Adrian know,” Axull Darr responded.